By Lana Birbrair

Law360, New York (January 10, 2012, 8:46 PM ET) -- A putative class of Symantec Corp. software purchasers accused the company Tuesday in California of breaching contracts by scaring customers into believing that their computers were infected to trick them into buying ineffective anti-virus software.

James Gross, a Washington-based Symantec software purchaser, accuses the company of deceiving customers into buying three products that fraudulently frighten users into thinking their computers are infected so that they will purchase virus removal software from Symantec.

“Unfortunately for consumers, the methods used by Symantec to induce consumers to purchase such...